


S11E10 - Last Child

by awed_frog



Series: Supernatural - Season 11 [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Grey's Anatomy References, M/M, POV Castiel, Post-Canon, Season/Series 11
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 04:13:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4549974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/awed_frog/pseuds/awed_frog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You thought Sammy’s role in this farce was over? Please. Your brother is now more important than he ever was.”</p><p>And this – this is too much. Dean snaps out of it, pushes down the familiar feeling of unworthiness, his desperate desire for death and quiet, he swallows it all back like bile – because this prick is not about to threaten <em>Sam</em>, not after bloody everything –</p><p>“You keep your hands off my brother,” he growls, but Gabriel just laughs.</p><p>“Like you’re keeping your hands off mine?” he says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivyblossom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/gifts).



> I wanted to do something special for this chapter, because it's the midway chapter and all, and in the end I decided to write it as a kudos and thank you to an amazing writer, ivyblossom. For this reason, the second part of this chapter is written in the voice of her Sherlock (from _The Progress of Sherlock Holmes_ , a gorgeous, amazing read) - or, rather, I _attempted_ to write it in the voice of her Sherlock. Any brilliance is therefore hers; any weirdness, mine. You rock, ivyblossom! :)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading!

_I'm dreaming tonight,  
I'm living back home_

 

Yeah, so this wasn’t what Dean had in mind when he’d said beach. Not at all. Of course, the world is now grey and creepy all over, but still – Dean is ready to bet this place would look all wrong in the sunlight, as well. 

He looks at Gabriel (his head is bowed, and he’s – not panting, exactly, but he’s breathing a bit unsteadily, like the effort of teleportation was almost too much for him), and then at the beach again. A beach, in his opinion, is supposed to be a fucking beach. White sand, and palm trees, and things. This place, though –

But it doesn’t matter, not at all. Dean doesn’t give Gabriel the time to recover – instead, he walks up to him, gets within striking distance before checking himself (the guy has just been tortured; also, none of this is his fault – possibly; _probably_ ) and closing his hands into fists.

“That thing,” starts Dean, angrily, and Gabriel raises his hand.

“Wait,” he says.

“No way, we’re talking about this right bloody now.”

“Just give me a minute here.”

But Dean is not having it. The memory of it is still too fresh (God, that white light exploding out of Cas’ eyes – Dean can’t – he just bloody can’t –), too painful. And the worst part is, he has no idea – was that thing a hallucination Raguel planted inside his brain? Or a vision of some kind? Is that actually going to happen? Because, hell _no_.

“Fuck that, I want -” he starts, but Gabriel raises his head and basically stares Dean’s words out of his mouth before putting his fingers on Dean’s forehead once again.

Dean’s stomach flips over and clenches (he manages not to puke, but it’s a very close thing), and when Dean blinks his eyes open, the beach is gone. Well, not gone, because he can still feel the soft, wet sand under his feet, but all around him everything else has shifted, and it’s actually –

“Son of a bitch,” he says, looking up, then through the gigantic window on his right. “Is this Seattle Mercy?”

Because it fucking looks like it. It’s empty, utterly and completely silent, which is, of course, strange and creepy, so what’s new, but the rest of it – they’re standing on that glass bridge thingy where the doctors always stop to chat; there’s spiky green plants, the kind that only seem to grow in hospitals, and the O.R. whiteboard (Dean’s eyes skip to the right-hand column, and he’s too far away to read it properly, but he can still guess, even from this distance, the name written under ‘staff’: _Shepherd_ ), and the nurses station. There’s even patients’ charts on the counter, and notepads, and all. Dean turns around, completely bewildered, and looks at the huge spire of the Space Needle outside the window; its lights are blinking sleepily in the half darkness.

“No,” says Gabriel from his left, and he sounds so unlike himself Dean whips around to look at him.

The archangel appears to be getting to his feet (Dean hadn’t even felt him falling down), his usual slow grace hindered by a slight tremor in his legs. Once he straightens up, though, he smirks at Dean, and then spits some blood out of his mouth before stretching, carefully and gingerly; for a second there, he looks so cat-like that Dean is almost surprised the guy doesn’t have whiskers (what he _does_ have, though, are two gigantic wings, so blindingly white they almost hurt Dean’s eyes).

_Fucking hell._

“What – where are we, then?”

“Inside your mind. I know this place normally comes equipped with a certain someone, but I’m afraid right now I don’t have the energy to accomodate your base urges.” 

Dean rolls his eyes, then takes another look around, is slowly filled with unwilling admiration, not only for Gabriel’s powers (if being an archangel doesn’t come with a few perks, man, who would even want the job?), but mostly for the level of detail his subconscious can apparently conjure up. It’s not like he watches the show to learn about interior design, after all.

“Right. Well, what the hell are we doing here? What was wrong with your creepy beach?”

Before answering, Gabriel stretches his neck on one side, then the other. His wings are gone already, and he now looks like his usual smarmy self, the t-shirt and jeans slightly ridiculous in the pristine medical environment around them.

“I had a feeling you were going to say something disparaging about Raguel, and thought it best it should remain between us. See, he can spy on me, but not on you.”

And that’s how things go from _What the fuck_ to _Makes no sense_ in one second flat.

“Not –”

“You are hidden from every angel in existence, Dean, remember?” says Gabriel, and, before Dean can move, he’s taken a step forward, pressed his hand, very lightly, on Dean’s ribs. “Humans. I always forget how different you feel,” he adds with a frown, splaying his fingers against the soft cotton of Dean’s shirt.

Dean is about to say something insulting, aggressive, the shit he always says when someone, anyone, shows any kind of interest in him ( _Hey, at least buy me dinner first, won’t you?_ ) but the expression on Gabriel’s face is so intense and far away he decides it’s best to keep silent. It’s very clear that Gabriel is not, in fact, thinking about him, and that’s why Dean allows himself to be petted for another second before taking a step back.

“Okay, well, whatever. That thing just threatened to kill Cas. He’s going down.”

“Threatened Cas? When?”

Gabriel’s eyes shift, as it so often happens, melancholic sadness slipping out of them as though from an upturned glass, and now he’s completely focused again.

Dean makes a vague gesture.

“He showed me Cas – Cas dying,” he says. “In my head, or something. So, fuck it. I don’t care who he is – how do we kill him?”

Gabriel looks at him briefly, and then just laughs.

“What?” asks Dean, a bit defensive. “He’s an archangel. We’ve killed archangels before.”

“No, _you_ haven’t,” says Gabriel, and now he sounds halfway between annoyed and offended. “And, anyway, he’s not just _any_ archangel. He’s _the_ archangel. It’d be like saying the Chrysler building is an office block.”

“Don’t –” starts Dean, and then, mercifully, hears the second part of the sentence in his mind ( _\- mention the Chrysler building_ ), and how ridiculous it sounds, and shuts his mouth again. 

“There must be some way we can gank him,” he says instead, and he clenches his jaw against the exasperated look on Gabriel’s face. “What? You sweet on him or something? He just tortured you, man.”

“Yes, and I’m overjoyed you care, but right now Raguel is our only chance to make this right. It’s time to grow up, Dean – the world isn’t split between good people and people you need to ‘gank’,” he adds, sketching the word with heavy sarcasm. “Sometimes we have to work with each other and find some middle ground.” 

“This from the guy who wanted to waste a kid, like, yesterday.”

“That was the Antichrist. It’s a bit different, don’t you think?” 

“Yeah, talking about that – this blood of Christ thing – how much blood are we talking about, exactly?”

Gabriel tilts his head slightly to one side, looks at Dean curiously.

“A single drop,” he says, slowly. “I mean, you could harvest a bucket of the stuff if you were feeling really enthusiastic, but divine Grace is, by its nature, infinite.”

Dean frowns at him.

“It means,” Gabriel adds, with a touch of his old impatience, “that there is as much Grace in a drop of blood as there would be in an ocean of the stuff. Infinite is infinite – as discussed, I believe, by Cantor. Just think about set theory.”

Of course Gabriel knows Dean doesn’t get the reference. He _must_ know. This is why Dean found him irritating as a trickster, as well – a bloody know-it-all. And, perhaps, underneath it all, this childish need to prove he’s better than others; to put others down, even. Not that Dean can begrudge him that, not after hearing Cas talk about a dad he’s never seen. And Cas had it easy. Growing up with Lucifer and Michael and all those other pricks is bound to have been – if angels even grow up, that is. They probably don’t. Celestial purpose, or something. Anyway, messed-up childhood or not, this is still called being a dick, and Dean smiles sweetly.

“I try not to, most of the time. Messes with my downstairs brain.”

“I bet it does. Say what you want, clever people turn you on. Opposites attract, apparently.”

“Whatever, just – focus for a second, here. So you wouldn’t need to kill the person in order to get their Christ blood?”

“No.”

“You sure? You swear it? On your bloody wings?”

Gabriel hesitates for a second, then rolls his eyes and nods.

“Perfect. Then I know where we can get some.”

“What are you talking about? My brother killed the last of the Nephilim last year.”

“Who, Cas?” asks Dean, not that he needs to, because these angels – they’re always going on about _My brother this_ and _My brother that_ , but, somehow, it’s mostly clear whom they are referring to. Dean wonders, briefly, if it’s a sort of subliminal message, a ray of meaning Gabriel is beaming directly to his brain, and freaks out for half a second before deciding it doesn’t really matter, because when did Cas kill a Nephilim, and how come he doesn’t know about it?

“How did you think Metatron finished his spell? He needed divine Love for it to work. The heart of a Nephilim –”

“The bow of Cupid,” Dean adds, and he has a sudden flash of that night – God, it feels like two eternities ago – Cas looking at him, then away.

_So this is it. E.T. goes home._

He’d felt like such a wreck in that moment – he’d wanted, desperately, to ask Cas to stay, and yet he’d known – he couldn’t ask Cas to give up Heaven. He hadn’t done right by Cas, not by long stretch, but still. There were limits, even to his own selfishness and douchebaggery. He’d forced Cas to choose before, and after seeing what choosing had done to him (whatever Cas had said about it being a strategic decision, his fruitless search for God had been about something completely different, and maybe Dean was human and limited and all shades of dumb, but he’d seen that just fine) he’d sworn to himself he’d never do it again. 

“And the Grace of a Fallen angel,” says Gabriel, and Dean is shaken back into reality.

“Cas hadn’t fallen yet,” he says, distractedly.

“There is more than one way to fall, Dean.”

Dean actually scoffs at the smirking archangel, because this is – when did their fucking lives become fucking _Dynasty_?

“That was cheap,” he says. “Even for you.”

And then, before he can think better of it, he adds, “Did you know?” 

“I guessed,” says Gabriel, and Dean doesn’t know what he’s talking about, exactly – their tragic and doomed love story, or Cas’ robot thing, his inability to understand feelings, perhaps, or (Dean cringes just to think about it) that other thing – that desperate kiss – it had felt like dying, like everything was about to end – and it had ended, all of it, because –

Anyway. Dean wants, very much, to have a second opinion on all of that, but not now. Also, he needs to be blind drunk to have that conversation, with Gabriel or with anyone. So he tries to focus instead – he’s fairly sure this can work.

“We need to go back to the house,” he says, his mind elsewhere, “and talk to Claire.”

Thanks to the constant twilight and his general misery and all sorts of angelic mindfucks, Dean has no idea how much time has passed since he left Jody’s house. Can’t be more than one day or two; could very well be centuries. He still remembers it perfectly, though – he’d done all he could to postpone climbing into that horrible soccer mom Subaru (it was pale green, for fuck sake’s – pale _green_ ), because he really, really hadn’t wanted to be stuck in a car with Cas for six hours. So he’d stripped his bed clean (not likely to come back, because that’s his life), pretended to clean his room (he’d had no idea about where the supplies were kept, and the room was pretty much clean already, so), made a perfunctory weapons check (useless: Jody and Donna had it all under control), waved at Hunter (he’d waved back, so that was a win) and then he’d stepped outside, in the cold and the darkness, had tried to walk towards the car, towards Cas – the angel had been standing, very straight, next to the passenger’s door, and hadn’t turned around when he’d heard Dean coming closer (hell, he’d probably been listening to Dean moving things all over the house, had surely heard Dean’s annoyance, somehow, Dean’s need to smack his head into a wall, and he still hadn’t done anything) – and Dean had just stopped walking.

“I – ” he’d said, scrambling for something believable to say, “I forgot to say goodbye to Jesse.”

Which was perfectly true, thank you very much. Jesse had remained in his room, door firmly shut, as Dean joked and smiled at everyone else.

Not that Dean had blamed him; and, of course, Jesse isn’t Dean’s responsability. He doesn’t even know the kid, not really. He hadn’t wanted to bother Jesse, because, well – it’d been brave of him to come to the house, but that didn’t make it all right; that didn’t make him fit in. Because everyone else there – all victims of supernatural bullshit, people Dean had saved, people he’d shared a beer (or a minigolf game) with. 

And Jesse: the Antichrist. Mr Supernatural Bullshit himself, in the fucking flesh. The threat to humanity, a child Dean had basically met once and then sort of forgotten about, because his life is just _that_ fucked up – because meeting the actual _Antichrist_ had ended up being a mere footnote in the whole mess crashing down on them at the time.

But Jesse had still come back, Jesse wanted to be on their side, and in the end Dean just hadn’t been able to move towards Cas (his shoulders tense and angry under the trenchcoat, his broken wings flickering in and out of existence) and so he’d turned tail and gone back inside.

“Jesse?” he’d called, before pushing the door open.

Jesse had been on the bed, lying on his back with a battered copy of _Wuthering Heights_ open on his chest, and he’d smiled, briefly, a bit sadly, when Dean had come in and shut the door behind him.

“You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Dean had made some kind of sound, a disbelieving snort, and Jesse had smiled again.

“I am. It’s just weird, you know.”

“You’ll be fine. Donna and Jody are good people. They’ll look after you.”

“I wasn’t talking about – never mind.”

“What?”

A stretch of silence, and then – 

“It feels – empty.”

The kid had closed his eyes, then, his arms coming up to hug himself over the cover of the book.

“I always felt it, even after – even after you did whatever you did to him.” 

And Dean had heard it, crystal clear, had heard the name Jesse had been unable (still) to say out loud: _Lucifer_.

“And now it’s gone.”

Dean had looked around the room – the single bed, a small writing desk, old-fashioned flowery curtains, three books (the _Bible_ , something about birds, a French dictionary) on the shelf. He’d tried to pretend he didn’t know what Jesse had been talking about, because he’d had his share of Sam talking about it, and it was always wrong (upsetting) to discuss these things. Because it wasn’t normal to be more than human. It wasn’t _right_.

But Jesse – Jesse hadn’t been drinking demon blood just so he could feel special. Or save the world, or whatever Sam had been doing (and whatever he’d been thinking, he’d been kidding himself – demon blood was a drug, that’s all it ever was, and it hadn’t –). No, Jesse had had no choice in the matter, and he was still a kid, so Dean had managed a rough _Yeah?_ and then looked at the curtains again.

“It’s difficult to explain what it felt like. A sort of – you know when you swim in the sea, and it’s cold, and then you come out and just lie there, and your whole skin is tingling because the sun is burning hot and there’s salt drying on you, and everything? Hot, and cold, and slightly uncomfortable, and yet the best feeling in the world. All at the same time.”

As if Dean had ever taken a beach holiday. He’d had sex that had been a lot like that, hot and cold and uncomfortable and addictive as hell, but a beach - the Impala humming all around him, low and soothing, and a dark night out of the window, a proper night, stars and all, not this bullshit around them now, and the long stretch of road in front of them. 

_Sand between our toes, Sammy. Sand between our toes._

_Right._

“I know it’s wrong, but I – it’s normal for me. It’s who I am. It’s how I found Claire, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dean? What do you mean?”

It’s Gabriel’s voice, and it’s coming from far away. Dean blinks, and the tower outside the window comes into focus again. 

“Claire,” he repeats, and then clears his throat, tries to sound sane. “There’s something about her – she’s not human. Not completely. Jesse said he could feel her – her soul, or whatever – from thousands of miles away, that they were the same.”

Gabriel snorts under his breath, and Dean ignores him.

“And she was the one who made those wards. Cas said,” Dean starts, but finds he’s unable to finish his sentence. The thing is etched in his memory, in every fucking detail. The black and white kitten, hurrying away from him, half tripping in the tall grass. The way it had simply – the way Cas had simply _been_ there, the pinkish flash of the wards outlining a silhouette which was so familiar (beloved) Dean had felt a surge of pure relief, raw and deep – seeing Cas there, knowing he was fucking all right – and the way he’d said, just seconds afterwards, _I am not happy to see you. I can love you no more_.

So Dean doesn’t finish his sentence, but Gabriel seems to work it out all the same. And maybe he’d suspected something, as well. Claire had been acting way too familiar around Gabriel, after all, and Dean had assumed it had been simple teenager brattiness, that Claire was like him, a bit – see house on fire, walk right in – but when she’d actually spoken – Enochian, or whatever the fuck it was, to Gabriel, something had felt very wrong. So the fact Jesse had assumed Claire was like him – angel father, human mother – hadn’t surprised Dean, not really.

“Was Cas’ vessel still alive when Cas was possessing his daughter?” asks Gabriel, and Dean nods.

Gabriel makes a sound then, something between _Will you look at that_ and _So something is actually going well, for once_ , and Dean relaxes slightly. Item one, then – check. Which means they’re one step closer to ending this mess. _His_ mess. He takes a few steps forward, heading for the railing, and feels his feet give way, only just, under his weight. He doesn’t understand how this works, not at all, how he can be both on that beach and here in Seattle Mercy Hospital. He doesn’t understand, most of all, where Gabriel is. Did he leave his vessel behind? Is Dean, his body, his physical self, standing alone in that place, drooling at the mouth? Or is Gabriel’s vessel there with him?

“How does that work, then?” he asks, abandoning that useless train of thought, and focusing instead on Cas and Claire.

Gabriel, as usual, seems to know exactly what Dean means.

“Human feelings are – we don’t feel, Dean. Not like that. I don’t think Cas even knew, at first, that he’d left some of his Grace within Claire. It’s more probable he’d done it instinctively, to protect her. Something to do with her father’s love for her, I think.”

Dean thinks that over for a second, then he turns around, still leaning against the railing, and frowns at the archangel.

“Are you saying Cas loves Claire like a daughter or something? Because he was sort of a dick back then, and then he didn’t look for her for years –”

“ _Years_.”

Gabriel smiles, but this is his danger smile, and Dean straightens up without even knowing he’s doing it.

“You have no idea, do you? Of how _painstaking_ it is for us to slow down? To perceive days, months – even years – the way you do? The next time you load your weapons, Dean, hold that salt in your hand for a moment. Count every grain. Feel it between your fingers. Try to imagine how it would be to do just that – no running around, no eating your precious burgers, no sex and no booze – try to imagine how it’d be to just sit in a room and look at that salt in the palm of your hand – to focus on it, to count grain after grain.”

“Okay, now that’s -” _unfair_ , Dean wants to say, because what the fuck?, but Gabriel just keep talking.

“That’s what you are to us. Uninteresting. Unimportant. You grow old and die before we even have the time to –”

He stops talking then, turns away from Dean, and when Dean looks at him, he can see the outline of where they actually are – a black, volcanic beach, the blue-grey sea, and the gigantic cliffs eating up the horizon. And something about it actually makes things click into place, because before Gabriel was Gabriel, he was Loki of Asgàrd, the Playing Man, and he lived in a land of hard stone and large skies. _This_ land. 

“So this is – we’re not in the States, are we?” he asks, a bit tentatively.

A short silence. Then – 

“We’re in Iceland, in what is today called,” says Gabriel, without turning around, and Dean sees him looking up, almost sniff the cold air, “Vík í Mýrdal. Although I used to know it as –”

“Iceland? Is this where your vessel –”

And this was a mistake, this was obviously a mistake – Dean hadn’t meant to say anything at all, he’d just been fishing, that’s all; and if he’d done it right, he’d have mentioned the guy by name, he’d have called him Leif, because he’s not forgotten that name, Leif; and he’s not forgotten the distraught look which had come with it. Dean had wanted, perhaps, to balance things a bit, and he should have kept his mout shut, instead – Gabriel’s not his fucking girlfriend, they’re not gossiping about boys, here, so fuck Sam and all his whining about ‘the need to discuss emotions’, because he’s clearly wrong – all those mentions of Cas and love and bloody eternity have unsettled Dean, and he’s forgotten Gabriel is not a good person to seek a connection with, he’s not a _person_ , period, and now the guy has turned around to face Dean, a movement so rapid Dean’s eyes haven’t been able to track it, and he looks downright murderous –

“Do not presume to know me. You don’t know _anything_ about me. You don’t even know my true name – the mere sound of it would make you deaf and blind. Just because I killed you a few times it doesn’t make us pals.”

He walks up to Dean, straight to his face. His wings are visible again, they’re fully outstretched, and they are still blindingly white – Dean has to bring a hand up to shield his eyes against them –

“You were right, though. About Sam, about what I saw in him. I was never interested in you. You’re not the Winchester brother with the manifest destiny, after all. You’re _nothing_ ,” he says, almost breathing the word against Dean’s lips, and then his voice drops even lower, and he adds, slowly, maliciously, “But, then again, you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Manifest destiny?” asks Dean, steadying himself against the cold emanating from the archangel ( _Most people think I burn hot. It's actually quite the opposite –_ ).

“You thought Sammy’s role in this farce was over? Please. Your brother is now more important than he ever was.”

And this – this is too much. Dean snaps out of it, pushes down the familiar feeling of unworthiness, his desperate desire for death and quiet, he swallows it all back like bile – because this prick is not about to threaten _Sam_ , not after bloody everything –

“You keep your hands off my brother,” he growls, and his hands find their way to the collar of Gabriel’s ridiculous shirt.

Gabriel just laughs.

“Like you’re keeping your hands off mine?” he says.

“You know, I’m fucking _sick_ of you,” says Dean, pushing Gabriel off him – a human would have fallen down, but Gabriel remains on his feet, and this makes Dean even more aggressive. “You were the one to bring me here,” he continues, and he kicks the ground, violently, kicks black sand right into Gabriel’s face, sand, which is weird and disturbing, because the hospital around them is as pristine and perfect as it ever was, “and now you’re getting pissed because I mentioned your boyfriend – well, fuck you. Fuck your fancy talk and your infinity bullshit. You think people don’t know anything about – you think we don’t _know_ what it feels like to care for someone and watch them die? God, you’re such a prick.”

Gabriel is not smiling anymore. The air around him is shimmering, and it’s getting colder by the second – Dean has the definite feeling he’s just this close to be finally killed for good, and the thought makes his very blood sing, because _Bring it on – bring it the fuck on –_

“Yeah, go right ahead – smite me, punch me, gut me, it’s not like I care – but I think you’re fucking forgetting something here – fucking again. Because it’s us and them. And you said you’re on my team, so be on my goddamn team and stop fucking around.”

There is a soft, metallic sound, and the sword’s hilt flickers into existence behind Gabriel’s left shoulder.

“Yes, about that – I’ve seen your idea of team. I’m an archangel of the Lord, and I stand before Him. If you think that being on your side means I agreed to be a tool –”

“A _tool_?”  
Dean is bypassing furious; hell, he’s going straight for _Let’s bloody end it here_.

“I’ve seen your thoughts. More than once.”

“Thoughts – you goddamn _idiot_. Thoughts have nothing to do with – you say you can’t feel, but _I_ bloody can. And I know one thing – family don’t end with blood.”

Everything just shifts. The cold stops pressing on Dean’s skin, and all of a sudden Dean finds he can breathe again – he hadn’t even noticed how difficult it had been to just fucking _breathe_ , what with the sharp as knives cold and the raw power crackling around them – Gabriel swaps his smitey face for something much less defined – he takes a step forward, and Dean is unsure if he’s about to be killed or – dear God – _hugged_ , but then Gabriel closes the distance between them, raises a hand to his forehead –

The wide space around them dissolves, then is put back together again – a room, a raspy radio in the background –

“Dean! Finally! I’ve been praying to Gabriel for, like, half an hour –”

“It was ten minutes, tops -”

“It so wasn’t –”

“Claire? Jesse?”

“Are you alone? Where’s Gabriel?”

Dean takes in Claire’s excited face, then nods at Jesse (quieter, more somber) before looking around. He’s back at the house, and he is, indeed, alone.

Well, fuck the guy.

“Yeah, well, we were busy. And what where you praying to him for?” he asks, as he notices the Ouija board on the kitchen table.

“We found Sam.”

“Sam?”

Dean thought he was feeling pretty miserable already, but this – 

He looks down at the table again. He’s not a fan of Ouija boards, but he’s used them a few times. And it’s not like anyone can be unaware of how they work.

“It doesn’t mean anything,” says Claire, fiercely. “We’ll get him back.”

“Where is he?”

“We don’t know,” says Jesse. “We’ve only just made contact.”

“Well, ask him.”

Before any of them can move, however, the planchette starts to vibrate, and then, slowly, painstakingly slowly, points to the letter P.

P. Nothing else. Not that Dean needs anything else. He knows how fucking hard it is to move one of those things from beyond the veil.

“How do we talk to him? He’s not here, is he?”

“We don’t think so. We have no idea about what’s actually going on. We’re moving the thing to talk to him, as well. It’s been really slow, actually.”

“Okay, then.”

Dean sits down next to Claire, moves his hand over the board.

“Wait! Let him finish.”

“Oh, he’s finished.”

“What? But –”

“He’s in Purgatory,” says Dean, curtly, because he’s sure (if Sam can use this thing, then he’s dead, and there’s not lots of places starting with P where souls can hang out) and he doesn’t want to talk about it, not now, not ever. His kid brother alone in that place – pushing the thought aside, he puts a finger on the planchette, moves it to B, then E, and as he’s starting on the N, he feels it shift, lets it go, watches at it vibrates, then stop over the W.

Dean drums his fingers on the table, tries to think. If Benny is still down there, where would he be? He would try to find Andrea; of course he would. Dean has no idea how long Benny had been in Purgatory before their paths crossed (before Benny saved his life), but one thing had been obvious from the start – Benny was no good on his own. The thought brings about the usual shreds of guilt and regret – so much shit in his life and he can’t fix any of it. Dean stares at the Ouija board as he remembers the ghost he met inside his own mind ( _It’s the purity you crave. Killing without consequences._ ); as he thinks about his life in Purgatory, those endless evenings – after a while, Benny would talk, inevitably, about food and women, and Dean had always played his part during these conversations, grinning and whistling at all the right moments, but he knew, as did Benny, that it was lies, all of it. It had been centuries since Benny had been able to really taste the food he’d been describing in such loving detail (fried catfish, burning the roof of your mouth; peaches so soft they would melt on your tongue) and, in a way, women were just as remote to him (to the both of them), something Benny would never get to have again, not after his lady friend had been killed by his Maker – Benny had never talked about it, not really, but Dean was good with people and even better at reading between the lines. So, well. And the worst part was, Benny had never accepted this, not really. He hadn’t known what he wanted ('out': wasn’t that a vague concept), but he needed people, and that was something Dean could understand. All his life, what he’d dreaded most was exactly that – ending up alone. That first time, when he’d woken up in that motel in Des Moines and found his father was gone (because, well, so he’d been serious about wanting to hunt down that thing alone: _Goddamit_ ), heading for Sam was no more of a decision than it was a decision to breathe. Dean could handle beaten up and bloody and burned with cigarettes butts; he could handle drunk, betrayed and left for dead; he could even handle raped. But alone – no. There was where the line was. So Benny had become, with time, a friend; a brother, even. Of sorts. But he’d also been a stark reminder of what would happen to him if – (if Cas died). After meeting Benny, Dean had prayed to Cas even more, he’d started crafting proper prayers (bits of the _Holy Father_ , whatever he could recall from the _Hail Mary_ ) hoping they’d be more effective, and then, as his desperation grew, he’d descended into insults, profanity, blasphemy, and downright begging. In fact, he’d never understood (until that dick Raguel had spelled it out for him) why Cas hadn’t reacted in any way to those prayers. Because after everything – when Cas had come back, when he’d managed to break Naomi’s mind control – he still hadn’t said anything. He still hadn’t understood. 

“Dean?”  
“I’m thinking,” Dean says roughly, and it’s not a lie, either. Cursing under his breath, he moves the planchette again.

“Blood?” says Claire, reading over his shoulder.

“Benny knows where the portal is. He’s a vampire,” he adds, as he realizes neither Claire nor Jesse have any idea what he’s talking about, “and vampires go to Purgatory after they’re killed. I met him there – he’s okay, and he knows a way out. There’s a chance he’ll be hanging out with other vamps, which means bleeding is the best way to draw them out.”

“But what if –” starts Jesse, and Dean just shakes his head.

He can’t listen to it, because whatever Jesse is about to say, he’s right. It’s a crazy, unsafe idea. It would probably get Sam killed, if Sam wasn’t dead already. So, screw it. It’s still the best they have.

Dean looks down at the Ouija board again. Sam is not answering, which means there’s nothing more to say. He knows as well as Dean does this is the best plan they have. And he’s a big boy. He can make it work. He’ll be all right.

Dean frowns, then puts his hand on the planchette again.

B-I-T-C-H, he spells, quickly, wishing there was more he could say to his brother, wishing he had the guts to draw those words out, this _I love you more than anything in this world, please be careful_ , this _I’m sorry I failed you_ which right now sit so tight in his throat he can’t breathe.

J-E-R-K, says the thing, jumping awkwardly from one letter to the next, and Dean smiles down at it.

“Right. So that’s taken care of,” he says, pushing the Ouija board to one side as though it doesn’t matter at all, and he looks at the two teenagers instead. “But there’s something else you guys should know.”


	2. Part 2

The world is a bloody grey place once your eyes are open. Well: not that this place is grey. Angels seem to favour a specific shade of white (eggshell). Wonder why that is. Though: not important; irrelevant. 

Not that I ever thought the world a grey place before. _Before_ : that is the key world. I taste it in my mouth, move it from one side to the other, check its rough edges and sharp angles in ten different languages ( _aurretik, antaŭ, avant, prima, qaSpa', vor, ante, pred, prin, oldin, ennen, gō_ ). It still tastes unfamiliar and sour. But: it cannot be helped. The world was not grey before meeting Dean Winchester; it is grey now (when Dean is gone, that is; always when Dean is gone).

I close my eyes, look for Dean’s soul for one, two heartbeats (not my heart’s; never my heart’s) and then I sense it, glowing, beautiful, only just marred by death. He seems to be in Europe (I consider, then discount, thirty-two different reasons why Dean should be in Europe, before conceding Gabriel’s motives are inscrutable), and it doesn’t matter, because he is safe.

Because death is, of course, a reversible condition. Even now (especially now). Dean can (will) be brought back to life. No other option.

I open my eyes again, look at Raguel (his true self; not his vessel), feel the buzzing of countless worlds pressing against my skin (the heat of a faraway desert; larks singing in ancient Greek; a woman cradling her child; Dean looking at Gabriel), look away again. 

The way Dean looks at me: an intimate touch (although it is not; really not). Never focused on other humans enough to understand how unusual Dean’s gaze is. Never cared to. That was before I fell, though. Being looked at as a human: quite different. A direct link (a biological impossibility, and yet) between Dean’s eyes and my heart (though: still not my heart; not even then). Something to do with fight or flight response, perhaps (perhaps not).

The exact nature of those human feelings is gone now, forgotten, despite my (pathetic) attempts to hold on to it. The spiritual part I can still perceive, but every other element is just gone (something to do with shortness of breath, tachycardia, tremors, blood flowing the wrong way around, leaving me empty-headed and uncomfortable in my stolen clothes). I did not question this reversal of state. Feeling my own Grace back in this body was (exhilarating breathtaking completely necessary; not) enough. And I did not realize it would be so easy to flip everything over again. Touching Dean: all it took.

Raguel is still talking (dreary, monotonous, terribly important) and I take a step back inside my own mind; I remember Dean (touching Dean). I remember what Crowley said (hate towards demons is a precise, unshakeable instinct in all of us; and yet I never knew such wish for violence until that moment), what Dean said ( _It meant nothing._ ). I have wondered, then (I still do) what it means to mean nothing. How can a memory be unimportant? How do humans decide which memories can be neglected, which are to be preserved? I am everything; I remember everything. Not a reason to boast, this, and certainly not now. I have caught myself wishing (more than once) to be ordinary; to be human. I remember how it felt to be Steve, to work at the Gas-N-Sip (what it was like to fall asleep on a hard floor every night, shivering with cold, my body aching in unfamiliar places: my shoulders, my legs, my heart; except: not mine). It would be easier, surely, to be Steve. It would solve, perhaps, everything (an irony of Fate). 

Except Dean didn’t like Steve (either). Dean didn’t stay. 

Hands are still tingling from the memory of it (my skin on Dean’s). I know now what ‘meaning nothing’ means, because this means nothing. Dopamine. Oxytocin. Serotonin. Ordinary substances left over from an ordinary life. It is easy (too easy) to imagine I have crossed the border into actual human feelings as I was pressing Dean against the bar's wall. Easy to imagine he was feeling something, as well, and that his feelings matched mine (Can feelings match, jagged edge against jagged edge until the whole make sense? Does it stop hurting, then?).

The white room (eggshell white) is swimming around me now. Confusion, agitation, inability to focus on several planes of reality at once: the human condition. Again, ironic.

I remember Dean’s eyes shifting, as they sometimes (often) do, from my eyes to my lips. A clear sign of sexual attraction, according to visual media. But: Dean is in control of his sexual behaviour (I am not), is capable of faking it. I know this: I have seen him do it, more than once. Dean lies. He lies to get information, he lies to get himself out of danger. He lies, perhaps, because he likes to (I am not certain; not enough data to support this hypothesis). And if I am honest with myself (how could I not be? yet another disconcerting human expression), he needed both from me. He wants to live (still; always), and he needs me to care. 

“Castiel?”

I am distracted. I am always distracted when Dean is around (I am distracted when he’s not). I need to focus. Work to do. Lives to be saved. The Mission.

I gaze at Dean’s soul one more time (the sound of it: nothing I ever heard before) before breathing out that plane of reality. Gabriel is with Dean now; Dean is safe. I do not need to know if he needs me to care because I am his friend (am I?), or simply because he is human, and, like all humans, he is afraid of the dark. I will still watch over him. Inevitable, fated, meant to be. Not a choice at all (it doesn't bother me; it never did).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Birds singing in Greek is something Virginia Woolf experienced, if I remember correctly, but I couldn't find a reference for it. 
> 
> Direct quotes from _The Progress of Sherlock Holmes_ by ivyblossom:
> 
> The world is a bloody grey place once your eyes are open.  
> Dopamine. Oxytocin. Serotonin.  
> I am not certain; not enough data to support this hypothesis.

**Author's Note:**

> So, about Cantor and maths - I only have a vague understanding about how it all works, but in case anyone is interested, our conception of infinity seems to be different from how mathematicians think of infinity. What blew me away as a teenager is the fact that, for instance, natural numbers (1, 2, 3 and so on) are infinite, but so are rational numbers (ie, fractions: 1.25, 2.5, 2.75). Logically, it would seem that you’d have more rational numbers than natural ones, since every interval between natural numbers contains many (infinite?) rational numbers. But since both sets are endless, this otherwise logical assumption doesn’t make sense. I still don't get how this is possible, how infinity even works, but, well, it's still fun to think about this stuff.  
> Also: apologies to any science people out there for this very crude and (no doubt) wrong explanation.


End file.
